Nokia says Lumia 800 is a UK sell-out

Several analysts have predicted this week that Nokia's Windows Phone sales for the year could end up being as low as just 500,000, well short of the company's target of two million.

If that does happen, however, it clearly won't be for lack of demand here in the UK, as Nokia reckons the Lumia 800 has now all but sold out across the country.

Critics of the Nokia 800 have claimed it offers no “breakthrough innovation”, and reckon the price is too high to boot. To be fair on Nokia, though, as its very first Windows Phone handset the Lumia 800 was never likely to be a radical departure from the norm.

Either way, it's the opinions of the smartphone-buying public that matter most, and Nokia certainly seems happy with how things are going so far.

“Lumia 800 sales in the U.K. are off to an excellent start,” the company revealed in a statement. “Based on earliest data the sales start of the Lumia 800 is the best ever first week of Nokia smartphone sales in the UK in recent history. By our measures, we have gained significant smartphone sell-out share in the channels in which we are operating in the UK.”

Of course, that doesn't tell us anything in terms of actual numbers, but still – it's been a long, long time since “Nokia” and “sold out” have appeared anywhere near each other in a sentence.

Lol. Buying before the discounts cut in. It sounds like Nokia have confused shiped with sold and forgotten the "Shops" will not reorder stock until the last lot sold, thats been the sticking poing on all previous WP7 handsets. High hope followed with terrible sales and large discounts. When Symbion handsets did outsell WP7 handsets by over 10 to 1 in Q3 2011 what does that tell you about how well WP7 is doing in the market....

IMHO 500,000 of "real" sale on WP7 phones for Nokia before year end is a good result for them. That would be nearly a third of all WP7 phones sold (possible a half if Q4 is as bad as the current trent of -1.2% year on year would leave WP7 only 0.2% of the market by Q3 2012 (Yes the figures are that bad, google "phone market share" if you want to check.)